“It wasn’t ridiculous,” Gage told her kindly but firmly. “At least one of us came around to the same realization.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. Sabrina said some very telling things on your show today. Yes, Gage, I listen to ‘Fitz and Giggles,’ too.”
“I heard her all right,” he grumbled. “I just didn’t understand a damned thing she said.”
“There’s a lot more to her story than what she told you, Gage,” Molly said reflectively. “For example, I’m pretty sure she didn’t tell you that Jackson demanded that she give up her career and be a stay-at-home wife.”
“You’re kidding me.” Gage paused with his fork en route to his mouth. It hadn’t occurred to him that men like Sabrina’s ex still existed in the twenty-first century.
“I only wish I were,” Molly said glumly. “For some insane and very unhealthy reason, she’s always been attracted to the type of men who are all wrong for her. Then you moved to town, and I thought that the two of you would get to know each other, Sabrina would see the light and—” Molly paused to nibble on her lower lip. “Never mind the rest. Sebastian’s right. I’ve already meddled enough.”
“It’s not your fault, Molly,” Gage said quietly, putting down his fork. “I fell in love with Sabrina, and I know she fell in love with me. I want the whole truth, and I want it to come from her lips. After that, I’ll leave her alone. I think I deserve that much at the very least.”
Never again would he put himself in such a humiliating situation, Gage swore to himself. Here he was, complaining to his best friend’s wife about his broken heart like some lovesick teenager. There was a lull in the conversation as Molly scratched at a place mat with her thumbnail, frowning contemplatively.
“I think so too, Gage” she finally said, resigned. “If Sabrina’s not here, at home or at the office, there’s only one other place she could be…”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Sabrina had never seen Grandma Ella’s old house look as lovely as it did in the snow. The large flakes continued to spiral down from a darkening sky and showed no signs of letting up anytime soon. Now the eaves were blanketed by a lush coat of white, and it looked like a down comforter had exploded in the flower beds.
The café was closed up tight, and her mother’s car was gone — she was probably spending the night with Rex. She could hear the sound of children’s shouts coming from a snowball fight somewhere down the block and the strained rumble of the engines of slow-moving cars. One of them came to a stop across the street from the café, and the driver got out. She could hear boots crunching in the snow somewhere behind her.
The sights and sounds reminded her of Walden, Iowa.
And Gage.
Where was he right now? Kicking back at one of the few pubs that was still open, enjoying a beer with his work buddies? At one of their homes, sitting at a table enjoying spirited dinner conversation?
Her cell phone pinged, and she glanced at the text notification: Molly. Sabrina tucked the phone back into her coat pocket without bothering to read the message. Her best friend was probably inviting her over for another misery session. Sabrina rose from her seat on the top step with a heavy sigh. It had been a mistake to call the radio station that morning. The sound of Gage’s voice reminded her that she was, as Molly so aptly put it, a coward.
Moping in solitary — in the snow — was her prerogative.
Sabrina paused by one of the rose beds that flanked the walkway. Gnarled, gray branches twisted around each other like arthritic fingers. A flash of color caught her eye. There in the center of one bed was a daub of pure red framed by brilliant green, like smears of fresh paint on a dingy canvas. The tiny rosebud seemed to be straining to reach the sky. Something about its tenacity moved her. A lump formed in her throat.
Get it together. Sabrina tried to draw her eyes away from the rose, but all she could do was stand there and admire its beauty while her vision went watery from emotion and the cold.
A sharp whistle cut through the air. “Hey, you! Ms. Chief of Staff! ‘Go-Go Green’!”
She spun around. She blinked to make sure that her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her. But they weren’t. Gage stood at the end of the walkway, hands stuffed in the pockets of his black peacoat. His hair had grown out, and he was in dire need of a shave. He looked thinner. Even from a distance she could see that his eyes had a tired, bluish tinge.
She’d never seen him looking finer.
“I have the answer to your question,” he said. “Eight months and twenty-two days.” His voice easily carried across the short distance between them.
“What are you talking about?” she yelled back, her husky voice punctuated by a chirp.
“The length of my self-imposed abstinence before I met you. Believe me, honey, I was counting.”
“It doesn’t matter, Gage. It never mattered.”
“It must matter, because you love me, right?” he called mockingly. “In fact, you love me so much, you burned jet fuel as fast as you could to get back to Austin. That’s love, all right. True love.” His smile and voice were bitter.
“Have you been drinking?” She took a few steps in his direction.
“No. But I am still pretty pissed off.”
“You have every right to be,” Sabrina conceded. “I’ve been truthful about everything but the one thing that matters.”
“Tell Noah about the flood.” He waited for her to take several more steps forward before he said, “I’m pissed off because I’ve always been on the receiving end of your inner monologues, Sabrina. Yes, I read your letter. I feel like I missed most of the plot.”
“There’s no plot, Gage. I don’t … plot.” She walked closer until she could have reached out and touched his face with her hand. But she felt as though she were standing on the edge of a great precipice and the divide that separated them was filled with the most irreconcilable of differences.
“What is it, then?” he demanded in frustration. “What scared you so much that you called it quits without talking it over with me first?”
“I want to make the world a better place.” She blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “I want to give something back that’s far bigger than myself. So I’ve decided to run for public office in the next state elections.”
“You just told me something I could have easily guessed, Sabrina,” he said wearily. “Now tell me something I can’t.” He shifted from one foot to the other while he waited for her response.
“I could have lied to you and told you that going after such a big dream doesn’t come with even bigger trade-offs.” She shook her head with a rueful smile. “But it wouldn’t have been true. There’s a lot about me you still don’t know.”
“Then clue me in.” His voice was more patient now.
There wasn’t any easy way to say it. There never would be. Sabrina took a deep breath and dove into the divide.
“I’ve always wanted to be the cool auntie,” she told him. “I’ve always wanted to play dress-up and catch with Molly’s kids. I want to take them to museums and rock concerts and do all the stuff cool aunties do. Having my own children has never been in the cards. But it’s definitely in Molly’s cards. It’s in your cards, too.”
“You know this for a fact,” he stated unhappily.
“Yes. Yes, I do!” she insisted.
He raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “How? Because I sure as hell didn’t, and I’m the one holding the hand. Something else is spinning around in that pretty head of yours. Tell me what it is.”
Then he reached over and tenderly brushed the snow from her hair. At his touch, Sabrina closed her eyes. She wished she could go back in time and do everything over again differently. Start from scratch, like Nola always said.
“Whenever I picture you ten years from now, I see a wonderful future.” She didn’t bother to hide the wistful note in her voice. “I see you with a beautiful wife. She loves you so very much, Gage. I see you with your children, putting toys tog
ether on Christmas morning. Teaching your son how to fly a kite. Taking a picture of your daughter before the prom—”
“—I got it. Lifetime Television stuff,” Gage filled in.
“Yeah.” She nodded. “But the woman by your side—” Her voice cracked with emotion. “—she’s not me.”
“So you thought by cutting bait you were sparing me the disappointment of spending my life with the single most important person in it?”
“I know it’s hard to believe,” she said. “But I left for you, not because of you. J-just because I c-can’t have it all doesn’t mean that y-you shouldn’t.” Now she was sniffling and stammering like a little girl who’d just taken a fall on the school blacktop. “I want you to be h-happy, Gage. Always.”
“So that’s it?” Gage asked after a pause. “That’s why you ran.”
“Yes.”
“No other reason, pinkie swear?”
“Pinkie swear,” Sabrina whispered. “See? There’s no way you can want me.”
He shook his head with a wry smile as though she were a hopeless cause he wished he could give up on.
“Sabrina, I’m pounding on the door of forty.” Now his face was sober. “If I’d wanted the whole two-point-five-kids-life-in-the-suburbs arrangement bad enough, I could have had it by now. God knows there were enough women queuing up. Sure, I could have been content with any of them—” He shrugged. “—if I wanted a life right out of a home insurance commercial. I don’t. I wanted more. I wanted you.”
“But that night in your room, you said all those things—”
“—I said things that I shouldn’t have when I was out of my mind with grief,” Gage concurred. “But you also twisted what I said into the most predictable outcome imaginable and blew everything out of proportion.”
“Most men want children,” Sabrina reminded him.
“I’m not ‘most men’ any more than you are ‘most women.’ We’re not ‘most people.’ Like Molly said, we buck the trend.”
“So what are you saying, Gage?” She had to be cautious this time. Really cautious.
“You are my family. You.” He cupped her face with his hands. “Not the people in a slide show you made up in your head. I don’t care if we have ten kids or none. Don’t you get that? See, Sabrina, while you were communing with Valerie Bertinelli or who the hell ever, I had a lot of time to think, too. I was wondering, ‘How does the class clown get the girl most likely to succeed?’ I realized the answer was simple: Life is too short to try. Either you want me as is or you don’t want me ever. Which is it?”
His cheeks flushed in the cold, she noticed. And when his hair was at an in-between length like this, the twin cowlicks on either side of his head were more pronounced. She wanted to notice everything about him.
And she wanted to take her sweet time.
“Yes, I want—” was all she managed to squeak before her throat clenched with joy, so she nodded her head vigorously instead.
“Damn it. Come here,” he said, exasperated, and held out his arms. She fell into them gratefully.
His lips pressed against hers intently, hungrily, sweetly. So this was alchemy — the way every kiss between them felt like the first. She breathed in his familiar smell — wood, soap and a warm note she’d never noticed before. Something that smelled like new wool. After he finished kissing her thoroughly, they rocked together and listened to the tiny crackle of snow hitting the ground.
Then a thought struck her.
“How did you know I’d be here?” she asked him.
“Your homegirl pointed me in the right direction,” Gage told her.
“Thank god for Molly,” Sabrina sighed.
“I’ll second that. Don’t you have something else you want to tell me?” he murmured against her hair.
“Hmm, what?” She stuck her hands in his pockets to keep them warm.
“I’ll give you a hint. It’s usually not something you say to someone when you only think they’re asleep.”
Of course. How could she forget? Sabrina looked up at him and grinned like a fool. “I love you, Gage Fitzgerald, and I always will.”
“So if it’s going to be just you and me, we should probably discuss what’s going to happen next.”
What did he mean by that? She pulled away slightly to get a read of his face.
“What I mean to say — or I suppose — I should really ask you—” He heaved a sigh. “Damn it, Sabrina. You know where I’m going with this.”
A smile teased her lips. Was the notoriously verbose Fitz actually stumbling over his own words?
“Spit it out, Fitzgerald,” she said in a husky voice. The warmth of his body was distracting her, and it was time to move onto better things. She could hardly wait for him to take her home and drag her into his bed. Correction.
Their home.
Their bed.
“Do you intend to make an honest man out of me?” A mischievous light was in his eyes.
“It’s a tough job but somebody has to do it,” she teased back. “You’ll have to meet Nola, you know. She’s an even bigger meddler than Molly—”
“No worries,” he assured her. “I’m astoundingly good with moms.”
“—and you’ll have to deal with seeing your wife’s name in the newspaper a lot,” she warned. “It could be a wilder ride than you thought.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, darlin’. I suppose I’ll have to tone down Fitz’s rhetoric, being that he’ll be in the public eye,” he mused.
“I’m sure he’ll weather it just fine. He might discover talking points he never knew he had.”
“Oh, hell. D’you mean public policy?” Gage pretended to look aggrieved.
“Policy for the people,” Sabrina clarified. “I’m going to help people, Gage, like you do when you joke around on air and make people laugh. I want to leave behind a legacy, just like Grandma Ella.”
“Grandma Ella?” He looked confused. “Who’s she?”
“I’ll tell you all about her sometime,” Sabrina said with a mysterious smile. She stole a loving look at the house behind her. Maybe she’d been wrong.
Some things do endure.
“I think Fitz can get behind all this.” A grin tugged at the corner of Gage’s mouth. “You know, I think I’m going to like being married to Representative Sabrina March. It should be one wild, crazy ride.”
She pressed her cheek against the lapel of his coat with a blissful smile.
“I think you mean Representative Sabrina Fitzgerald,” she corrected him lovingly.
He gave her a brief, tight hug that assured her he would always be there for her.
“You took the words right out of my mouth.”
Acknowledgments
Something About You was born out of my experience as a policy analyst. During my (heart attack-inducing) tenure with the House of Representatives, I met a lot of strong, powerful career women — women like Sabrina — who found it tough to navigate that whole work-life balance thing, especially when life included romance. So seven or so years ago, I started tapping away at the first draft. The eclectic characters of Sabrina, Gage, Molly and Sebastian had some stories to tell. In fact, they were so real and so vivid in my mind, Something About You wrote itself. I was just their medium.
But every writer starts out with a dream. Some authors envision the day when they land that big book deal and hold their still-warm-from-the-press novel in their hands for the first time. Others dream about book tours and signings. My aspirations were always a little different. Sure, I wanted to tell riveting love stories, but even the best ones eventually fade from collective memory. I wanted to create a legacy through my writing — and yes, I realize that’s asking a lot indeed.
If you’ve read my blog (http://lelainalandis.com/philanthropy/), then you know that I’m a big, sappy ball o’ charitable mush. I just can’t help myself; I’m happiest when I’m paying it forward, and education is a cause that makes me drool. A portion of the proceeds from
the Just You & Me series will be set aside to create an endowment that funds scholarships for nontraditional female students. Single moms re-entering the workforce. Women who had to put their college education on the back burner due to financial constraints. Career gals who need new skills to shatter that glass ceiling. I dream of empowering women so they can be their best.
I have so, so many people to thank for bringing Something About You to life, it’s hard to know where to start. I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to all of the indie authors who paved the way for writers like me — Kendall Gray, Jasinda Wilder, Raine Miller, Whitney Gracia Williams, Colleen Hoover, Jana DeLeon, Gloria Bowman, and Laura Carroll just to name a few. Without your inspiration, sage advice and (not so gentle) encouragement, Something About You would still be a MS Word file languishing on my computer.
Thanks to the lovely Deidre Knight for helping me find my path in publishing and to Kat, Ben, Kristi, Camely, Claire, and Sean Patrick for putting up with my panic attacks, nail-biting and bizarre neuroses during the thankless revision process. Another grateful gracie to Katie Ritcheske, my very patient editor, and to The Killon Group for the smashing cover design. Seriously, I’m not worthy.
Ah, my dear, gentle readers. ’Scuse me for digging up a childhood neologism, but you are just the bestest! Thank you so very much for taking a chance on Something About You. You could have chosen any romance novel of thousands, and you picked mine. If you have questions, feedback, comments or just wanna say “Hi, there,” give me a shout through my website.
Lastly, the biggest thanks goes out to my precious beaux, along with hugs, kisses and simmer-y, sizzle-y stuff I can’t write about in these acknowledgments. You are and always will be my “Gage”.
Love,
Lia
Something About You (Just Me & You) Page 40